During his struggle to end apartheid in South Africa, Nelson Mandela was no stranger to the Guyanese people. I shared the pain and anger of the oppressed Blacks in South Africa. In the early 1980s, at a time when there was no Internet and online petitions, I joined thousands of my fellow Guyanese in signing the Free Mandela! petition circulating at my workplace in Georgetown, Guyana.

In Guyana, we faced our own form of separateness. The two major racial groups, Blacks and East Indians, had allowed racist politics to divide our young nation. A divide that exists to this day.

When Mandela was finally released from prison in 1990, after twenty-seven years of incarceration, I had already left Guyana with my husband and sons for Brazil. Racial violence and political oppression had culminated in the assassination of Walter Rodney, our “Mandela.” The future of our nation was reduced to cinders.

The confinement and abuses of prison life could have transformed Mandela into an angry and bitter man. Instead, his years of isolation from society forced him to look within and to question his values, beliefs and relationship with his oppressors. He learned the power of humility, forgiveness, and love.

In his 1994 autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, Mandela wrote:

I am not truly free if I am taking away someone else’s freedom, just as surely as I am not free when my freedom is taken from me. The oppressed and the oppressor alike are robbed of their humanity.

At seventy-six, Mandela was ready to embrace his role as negotiator and conciliator between the minority white oppressive government and his people. Forgiveness and reconciliation with the enemy was by no means an easy sell. The transition to democratic elections with majority rule did not come without conflicts and more deaths.

We freed Mandela. Like other great leaders before him, he showed us the way forward to end the separateness of the human species. Forgiveness. Reconciliation. Love.

So simple… So difficult…

The truth is that we are not yet free… Mandela wrote in his 1994 autobiography. We have not taken the final step of our journey, but the first step on a longer and even more difficult road. For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.

The large role played by Guyanese as indicated below, together with the fact that Guyana desperately needs the conciliatory outlook and politics of Mandela, means that maximum use should be made of this period of reverence to explore this relevance to Guyana.

It will not be easy but we must, however slowly, refresh the dank atmosphere. UG or some politically uncommitted organisation should organise a serious and thoughtful discussion on the relevance of Mandela to Guyana.

The need for some kind of reconciliation process or commission and how this could be organised, could well be the result and hopefully lead to a kind of game changer.

Rosaliene, another fine article recognizing a great man. Nelson Mandela will remain immortal among us, not only for what he fought for, imprisoned for and lived for, but also for the character of the man. He was humble, affable and had an endless love for humanity. He will always stand tall among all great men.
Hopefully, the leaders in Guyana and other countries would not only pay respect to Nelson Mandela; the greatest tribute to him would be to embrace his principles and practice them.

Rosaliene when you signed the free Mandela petition in Guyana, you and others were on the right side of history. You and others stood for something that would become part of the annals of our history books, in lite of Mandela’s struggle for justice and his passing. We are the beneficiaries of this struggle; politicians and heads of government must take heed.

I had the opportunity of attending an invited event that was organized by former Mayor Richard Daley et.al. at City Hall in Chicago when Nelson Mandela visited us to say thanks for our contribution to the end of that evil empire – Aparthied.

As a member of the council on African affairs through the City of Chicago, under the the former Mayor Richard Daley, I was asked to write the inscription for the plaque that the council members presented to Nelson Mandela. I have the rough draft of my notes.

Friday, December 13, 2013, we will be coming together at Operation Push in Chicago where he visited for an event; community organizers, activist, sympathizers, and everyone else who was involved in this struggle. On that stage at Operation Push Nelson Mandela stood.

Rosaliene, thanks for sharing your thoughts with your pen, I learnt something I did not know.

Thanks for sharing your story, Yvonne. Nelson Mandela touched your life as it did mine and countless of people around the world. But the work he began is far from done. As you rightly say: “a luta continua.” The struggle continues.

Excellent post and comments – I am particularly impressed by Sara’s blog which I have read and will follow. I have been “cautiously optimistic” too many times, perhaps, but I see hope with these expressions, these demands to be heard and their calls to action. ONWARD —